I attended a standout session today at:
“AI Sovereignty: Balancing Innovation, Regulation & Global Collaboration”
Hosted by Michelle Bourgeois, Tech, Data & AI Leader at PwC; and featuring a brilliant panel of leaders on the frontlines of building sovereign AI ecosystems: Mohamed Talayé, CTO, Orange Business; Olivier Abecassis, CEO, Qwant; Martin Kon, President & COO, Cohere;.
What stood out?
Access to data is power: with US providers pulling API access, European players like Qwant and Ecosia are stepping up, launching the Stan API to ensure access to web data without transatlantic dependency.
Sovereign infrastructure is non-negotiable : Orange Business is rolling out Cloud Avenue , a distributed, sovereign data center network in France, aiming for ANSSI certification. Not just tech:trust.
Enterprise AI ≠ Consumer AI: Cohere made it clear, organizations need private, hybrid, and local deployments. AI must integrate with internal data, not just live in a black box on someone else’s cloud.
Collaboration beats competition: every speaker agreed: if we want truly sovereign, secure, and innovative ecosystems, even competitors need to co-create.
Telcos as trust anchors: Their network reach and customer relationships position them as key enablers of sovereign intelligence infrastructure.
This session did signal a shared commitment to building something better: AI that is open, sovereign, secure, and built for enterprise needs.
The road ahead will be complex, but exciting.
